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Trending in modern interior design frameworks is an integration of real and simulated (i.e. photographs, murals) elements of nature into buildings, and a number of interdisciplinary studies concern the effects of nature on various aspects of human functioning. The purpose of this paper is to measure employees’ self-reported levels of affective organizational commitment (AOC), perceived productivity, well-being, attention restoration and satisfaction at work to explore how each mural is conceptualized and to make recommendations to hospital administrators and facilities managers as they make decisions concerning mural design and placement. One hospital had a biophilic mural and the other had a bold abstract mural.

The research was carried out using post-occupancy evaluation and mixed-methods survey design.

Employees in both hospitals disagreed that their organizational commitment (OC), perceived productivity or well-being at work had improved since the new murals had been installed. Responses from both hospitals were also low concerning perceptions of attention restoration. Indeed, no significant differences between hospitals were found. Correlations among scales were found within hospitals that support published studies. More correlations occurred at the hospital where employees viewed the biophilic mural (e.g. between OC and perceived productivity, and between satisfaction with the physical environment and perceived productivity). At both sites, satisfaction with the physical environment correlated with OC.

The authors expected that those working within view of the biophilic mural would report stronger ratings of AOC, perceived productivity, well-being, attention restoration and satisfaction with the workplace than employees with a view of the abstract scene. No differences between groups were found; responses to psychosocial scale items asking about whether attitudes had improved after the retrofit were low or neutral for employees in either hospital. However, more correlations between scales that support existing literature were revealed for those working near the biophilic mural. Thus, the authors recommend architectural programming before a design change to gather insight on occupants’ preferences at work.

The purpose of this paper is to examine science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics (STEAM) efforts at Florida Atlantic University’s (FAU) John D. MacArthur Campus Library (JDM) to share methodologies and ideas with other academic libraries. Recently, there has been an emphasis on and push for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education in colleges and universities across the USA as a means for training future work forces and for remaining competitive in global job markets (Land, 2013). FAU in South Florida is a big proponent of STEM and STEAM education (Florida Atlantic University, 2012; Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, 2013).

As many librarians and outreach staff strive to remain relevant to their faculty and students with changing technologies (Drewes and Hoffman, 2010), the FAU JDM outreach staff have developed several novel programs that are geared toward the STEAM initiative.

The Library Outreach Committee at FAU was committed to investigating how they could advance student success through visual arts programming. How can the library help contribute to STEAM education for the students and learning community as a whole? How can the library engage art students? Can the library promote dialogue in arts to the faculty and staff, regardless of their disciplines? This article will describe and discuss the various art outreach programs that the JDM has tested and their outcomes addressing goals toward STEAM education and academic libraries.

The objective in sharing the experiences at the JDM is to spark new and successful program ideas at other academic libraries across the country and abroad and create knowledge in this relatively new area.

This article aims to describe the process of documenting outdoor murals of a metropolitan community in the Midwest and disseminating the information through a library hosted web publication.

The outdoor murals are surveyed and photographed by an academic fine arts librarian, the author. Access is created via a web publication, supported and developed through library resources.

The project not only increases access to works by local artists, but serves as a resource for historical images when, or if, a work becomes damaged or is removed.

This new pathway to public art serves as a bridge between the campus and the community.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a holistic way of incorporating biophilic building design that creates a restorative environment attractive to prospective urban hotel employees. This study additionally examines the role of perceived well-being from nature attributes and associated impacts on emotions and likelihood to choose to work for a hotel with nature attributes.

This study used a conjoint analysis to detect the most resotrative individual and combinations of biophilic attributes that can improve employee well-being. In addition, nature attributes influence on emotions and intentions to work for a hotel were analyzed.

Results showed that not all nature attributes are equally evaluated by urban hotel prospective employees. In this study, the authors found that natural lighting, outdoor green views and indoor landscaping are important factors in the evaluation of an urban hotel with biophilic features. However, this tendency varies when the sample was divided by prospective employees’ who perceived higher or lower levels of well-being would be influenced by nature attributes.

Unlike previous studies, the authors tested a multiattribute design and results demonstrate the perceived restorative effect of nature attributes in an environment on prospective employees. In addition to extending the biophilic design in hospitality literature, the authors provide practical suggestions to urban hotels incorporating biophilic design and propose that specific elements have the propensity to enhance the well-being of prospective employees and reinforce positive emotions and intentions to work for urban hotels that incorporate them.

The purpose of this paper is to semantically annotate the content of digital images with the use of Semantic Web technologies and thus facilitate retrieval, integration and knowledge discovery.

After a review and comparison of the existing semantic annotation models for images and a deep analysis of the characteristics of the content of images, a multi-dimensional and hierarchical general semantic annotation framework for digital images was proposed. On this basis, taking histories images, advertising images and biomedical images as examples, by integrating the characteristics of images in these specific domains with related domain knowledge, the general semantic annotation framework for digital images was customized to form a domain annotation ontology for the images in a specific domain. The application of semantic annotation of digital images, such as semantic retrieval, visual analysis and semantic reuse, were also explored.

The results showed that the semantic annotation framework for digital images constructed in this paper provided a solution for the semantic organization of the content of images. On this basis, deep knowledge services such as semantic retrieval, visual analysis can be provided.

The semantic annotation framework for digital images can reveal the fine-grained semantics in a multi-dimensional and hierarchical way, which can thus meet the demand for enrichment and retrieval of digital images.

An interdisciplinary body of literature has focused on the role of lighting in mitigating patient and employee stress and error-producing conditions in hospital settings. The purpose of this study is to explore how a new circadian lighting system installed in a small pharmacy unit with no penetration of natural light is experienced by staff. Psychosocial variables, such as affective organizational commitment, perceived productivity, well-being, and satisfaction with the physical work environment, were measured to further a line of inquiry that may help facilities managers and hospital administrators make optimal choices when purchasing lighting and commissioning retrofits.

Post-occupancy evaluation; mixed methods survey design.

While affective organizational commitment, perceived productivity, well-being and satisfaction with the physical work environment were experienced, to some extent, by employees, low average responses about whether the setting had improved, as the circadian lighting had been installed suggest that the retrofit did not affect them as positively as expected. Counter to the intention of the installation, participants did not perceive the circadian lighting as having strongly improved their levels of stress, concentration, mood or fatigue at work.

More research on simulated daylighting should be done to optimize occupant responses to lighting retrofits in hospitals. This case study supports recommendations to measure relevant psychosocial variables before and after a design change. Similarly, sized units within hospitals and health care facilities that possess analogous dimensions and design constraints concerning a lack of daylight penetration will benefit from this study’s mixed methods, results and interpretations.

This paper aims to investigate the impact that building design has upon the quality of life for residents of a care home who have dementia. To present a balanced perspective, carers within the care home also participate in the research.

A case study methodological approach was adopted using one care home, ten residents and five staff as a sample frame. During interviews conducted, participants were asked semi-structured questions on how building design features impact upon the quality of life of residents. Questions posed focussed upon key design principles that emerged from a detailed review of extant literature.

Building design for people with dementia must consider a complex array of features to provide a safe and habitable living space for residents and family members who visit. This living space must also be suitably utilitarian and provide a workable environment for staff. Hence, an appropriate balance between these two competing requirements must be attained, and often a tailor-made solution is required that fits the individual’s level of dementia. Three prominent areas that study participants expressed a desire for were a safe environment; support for wayfinding, orientation and navigation; and access to nature and the outdoors.

The work reports upon the rarely discussed issue of building design for people with dementia and could be used by policymakers and construction firms to enhance their knowledge capabilities in this area. The research concludes with direction for future research which should seek to provide more evidence-based research vis-a-vis perception enquiry and extend this seminal work to a larger sample of care homes or people with dementia living at home.

A surveyor′s report is often relied on when deciding to purchase a building. Examines the implications of careless reports. Looks at two recent court cases where no damages where awarded for pure economic loss in actions for negligence.

WE commence a volume of THE LIBRARY WORLD in circumstances which seem more cheerful for libraries than was expected when 1953 began. The community has survived the largest increase in local rates that has been imposed for many years with almost equanimity and libraries have not suffered appreciably in their budgets, although many of them suffered cuts which twenty years ago might have been disastrous. So far as library development is concerned we see a few signs that the bleak period of library building may become less rigid. We read of a development scheme of the spread‐over sort for the Surrey County Library that will cost £440,000 approximately. There have been a few libraries restored by the grants of the War Damage Commission; and of these the National Central Library reconstruction which cost over £90,000 is perhaps the chief example. Smaller but quite substantial signs are the new modular branch library, the first of its kind in England, the Manor Branch, Sheffield. This is alleged to be our largest branch library; if this is so, it is larger than the Leith Library at Edinburgh. Anyway, all public librarians will congratulate themselves on having an example in being of the modern flexible plan which must obviously influence the future. Librarians are not always masters of the building situation; they may have to accommodate themselves to town‐planners, local architects, ambitious ward councillors who have a natural desire for a “fine” building for the use of their immediate electors. So they may when the time comes have forced upon them buildings suitable for the hour but of such outer architectural permanence that they cannot be scrapped for a century. A succession of completely adaptable temporary buildings, which need not be expensive or inartistic, is what modern library service seems to demand. As a well‐known librarian asked of a famous architect: “Give us large linear and cubic space, well warmed, lighted and ventilated and no fixed divisions of the apartments in it.” The modular system, as in the Sheffield example alone seems to fulfil this condition at present. Further happy signs are the news that £9,000 is to be spent on improving Fulham Central Library, and the opening of departments such as two children's libraries at Hampstead and temporary branches as at Hull.

The purpose of this paper is first, to assess the applicability of the ideal of mixed‐use nodal development to a small town and rural setting. Second, it aims to model the patterns of density of the built environment, distribution of amenities and associated variations in travel distances and to show how all three have changed over the last decade in Antigonish town and county (Nova Scotia, Canada).

The core of the paper is a quantitative analysis, using GIS software to measure the changes in the built environment described in the second purpose (above).

The trend in Antigonish has generally been away from nodal development and towards increased commercial sprawl and increased distances between residences and amenities. However, there are realistic opportunities for reversing this trend.

The paper suggests improved measures of access to amenities (to include employment) and improved measures of walkability using GIS.

The findings of this paper are directly applicable to planning to improve the social amenities and environmental sustainability in a small town/rural context.

There is very little literature on the applicability of theories of nodal development in a small town/rural setting. This paper addresses that problem and brings innovative GIS techniques to bear on it.